Who’s Plan?

Posted in Uncategorized by

The day before Yesterday I had my day all planned, I had a schedule full of work: take organized notes on 2 books and three articles, pound out some letters, outline my next paper, and get some structured pre-writing done. But then I woke up to some real bad news. I mean, like real bad.

I felt my stress level rise, even though it was sort of checked by my recent regimen of stress relief (meditation and prayer, exercise, cutting back on caffeine, healthier eating, pro-actively solving problems, and finally leaving everything up to God). I can think of countless times when would nearly fall to pieces when hit by the big whammies in life. I should be grateful though, I’ve had some hardships (and who hasn’t?) but nothing unsurmountable, nothing so painful as the challenges faced by some people I know and love. I spent years not in despair, but frustrated. I would stare at obstacles, sometimes for years, trying to figure out ways around them, over them, under them. Sometimes I would look at hurdles and run the other way. Yeah I suck at track, and I never did well in PE class during the obstacle course. But yesterday I was sitting there all numb, just on the verge of old patterns. But as far as the course I have taken, I’ve had lot of coaches, trainers, cheerleaders, and sponsors along the way. Some even carried me when I was too tired. I’m just glad to be back in the race even after I punked out and sat out for a few laps of the race.

So, yesterday, I was dealing with one of the gravest debacles with the silliest movie “Anchor Man” playing in the background. Did I want to cry, or laugh, or just pretend the problem would go away and continue with my originally planned work routine? I needed to figure this all out and I was mad at myself because I needed to catch up on school work as opposed to dealing with the problem.

It turned out that the solution to this problem was letting it out of my hands. I just opened up with sincerity to my friends, family and community. I learned something bigger, something not in books, something they don’t even study in rational choice theory, Weber’s notion of charisma, Marx’s theory of capital, or any understanding of informal networks in network analysis. You learn the power of love, just people feeling you and wanting the best for you. Nobody makes it in this world alone. We all have them, but sometimes things are out of our control. Sometimes those who care can’t help us. Sometimes all they have is kind words, understanding, well wishes, prayers. Often, we overcome problems that are much bigger than us by somebody else who cares, who gives us strength, and gives us a lift. Problems explodes the myth of rugged individualism. Anyone who thinks they are self sufficient is arrogant and really mistaken.

My accomplishments are not my own (they are a product the labor of the people who came before me and supported by numerous people who have supported me), my talents are not my own (they are given to me by the Creator). I didn’t chose this, my timing, my parents, my skin color, my talents, or those opportune circumstances. So I can’t do this academia thing for myself. Prestige? There are millions of people who are more talented than I am that deserve the shots I’ve been given. But now that I have the privilege of being here, it is about getting into the grit of it, rolling up my sleeves and and doing the thing.

I have learned so much yesterday, what friendship, family and community is about. I can’t even begin to pretend that I can cover all the wisdom I heard today. I can only hope to absorb 10% of it. I don’t know, I feel inspired. Everybody I spoke to yesterday made me want to be a better person, to keep striving, to stay open, and be sincere. My day did not go as planned. I planned to study and produce for my advisors a paper demonstrating my mastery of certain materials. But in living and sharing I am beginning to understand and know what is beyond the pages of those texts. Jazak Allah kheir yall!

Spring Break Like Whoa

Posted in Academia, Bay Area, Graduate Student, Travel, Writing by

I was a non-traditional student. I spent years in community college which meant that I didn’t move out from mom’s house to stay iin dorms, join a sorority, do the whole spring break thing, and come home for the summer and intern. It began twelve years ago…and now I can’t believe I’m buying this ticket.

I worked my way through school, sometimes too broke to even afford books or a bus pass to get to school. I was a student activist, down for the struggle, but not that many people understood my struggle. Even in community college there were a few quarters I couldn’t pay tuition. During those times I’d spend my time studying in Santa Clara University’s library. I was lucky to meet some Muslim sistas at a MSA event, they gave me a ride and we’ve been tight since. One of the sistas lived by me and she’d pick me up and take me to campus just to hang out. There were two amazing Iraqi sisters at SCU, one began teaching me how to read and write Arabic. I wanted to travel so I could learn to speak and read Arabic and understand what I read and recited from the Quran. Likewise, a bachelor’s degree was a dream but I was just happy to be able to learn and be in that environment.

But there were people who believed in me even when I was ready to walk away from the whole academic thing. Spring Break was the farthest thing on my mind. I was just trying to break in. Life circumstances positioned me in a place where I finally got my foot in the door. I went back to community college and was accepted into SCU. But that door shut closed on my foot and all a few quarters later. No Spring break, just a three year break paying off tuition bills and learning how valuable education was through my bull %*& jobs. I did visit my family in Jacksonville Florida, which coincided with Black College Reunion, so maybe that counts. During that Spring break I didn’t know a single student at BCR.

Three years later, I wasn’t thinking about Spring Break. Debt paid off, I finally received a decent financial aid package and went back to school to finish this time for reals. Finally I did the damn thing, graduating with honors. I had my Kente cloth and my three sets of honors ropes, and even a phat medallion from an honors society. So I applied to graduate school, I loved this stuff. They would pay ME to study? What? I would get to travel to cool places? I could write my books and teach? Two things I loved to do. But Spring break was not on my mind. Break? Give me a break, I was riding on some high achievement high.

I got into grad schools, 5 fully funded and two in the Bay Area. Who would have thunk? In the bidding war, Stanford offered more funds. I loved Cal, spent a summer there attending Arabic classes. I always loved the East Bay more than any other place in the Bay, and Cal offered me a really nice financial aid package. But Stanford offered to send me to the Middle East to study Arabic for the Summer. I felt like I was walking on clouds. 12 years before, I used to ride the bus from the East Side of San Jose to Cupertino, just hoping to make get out of junior college. So, getting into these programs was kind of wild. A former college drop out, who used to get picked up by TABS for skipping class and get kicked out of of Mt. Pleasant for scrapping now becoming a scholar?

Fast forward to my first year in the program. Grad school kicks everybody’s butt. Especially if a program commits 5 years to funding you. Spring Break last year? Man, I was just finishing up incompletes, praying that I’d pass. In my department, B is failing, B+ means you’re wack. A- means you’re scraping by, and an A means you are okay (maybe). I’ve been working my &^%$#@ off since I got here in Summer of 2004. This last summer, I went to Vermont for nine weeks and Morocco for a Month, both times to study.

Spring Break? I wish….academics don’t break. A few weeks ago, my advisor gave out the command that I needed to hit up some archives. “What are your plans for Spring Break?” I wanted to say, “Sleep without guilt” but of course I had nothing to say. Great! So then he said I should find some Arabic sources in Chicago or at the University of Durham in the UK. I’ve never been to either place. I had to look into it and see if it was worth my while. I also had to find friends and family who would front me until I was reimbursed by my department.

Today, I just bought my ticket from New York to London, leaving on March 25 and returning on April 1. My job is great right? It is amazing, I should be super happy. And a huge part of me is. I just purchased my ticket and I’m like “Whoa! London for Spring Break” (Well actually Durham which is a few hundred miles away) Nobody in my family has been to Europe nor North Africa. I am about to see the London Bridges yall! But I’m too tired for all that excitement. Maybe it will hit me as I cross the Atlantic. I’ll sleep on that flight, maybe even on that train. Until then no sleep for Aziza. But on the real tip, this is better than Spring Break. I hope I come back with some good stuff from those archives, inshallaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!

Like Water for Chocolate

Posted in Soul Food by

I am not normally a big fan of holidays, but I was sad to hear that my mother wasn’t cooking anything for fourth of July. I love my mother’s cooking. Her recipe for potato salad is simple but so scrumptious. Her chicken and beef ribs are crazy delicious, marinated slow cooked. She makes homemade barbecue sauce, I can almost smell it simmering over the stove. She’s been stressed out lately and cooking a lot less and the meals have been less extravagant.

Everybody loves their momma’s cooking. But I’m telling you my momma and grandma cook some screaming food. I, myself, have spun off into my own realm of ethnic food. While my grandma has that good ole Georgia style of cooking, my mother adopted some influences from her loved ones and neighbors. There are still some smells, tastes and textures that bring me joy. I grew up eating a mixture of soul food and West Indian flavors. Greens, salt fish and shredded cucumbers, plantains, slow cooked pot roasts, black eyed peas, fresh fish, fried chicken, curried goat, red beans and rice, pallau, macaroni and cheese, rich sauces, spicy crab boils, candied yams, sweet potato pie, barbecues and chicken dumpling soup. Each dish has a special memory of home.
Some things I learned to master, with my own flair. When I lived at home, each one of us became my mother’s apprentice in the kitchen. She would tell me her cooking secrets, add this, brown that, thicken this, stir that in. As a kid, I would experiment in the kitchen, but it wasn’t until I was about 12 that I really started to put an effort into learning how to cook.

Before my sister was born, my mother had just me and my brother. But she would cook up a feast on holidays. I think she cooked to remind herself of her mother, sisters, and brother who were still in New Jersey. Certain things we craved from New Jersey, things I remembered by smell and taste decades before. Like Hoagies and cheesesteak sandwiches. But mom’s cooking was always around in abundance during Thanksgiving and Christmas. No one cared about the holiday itself. My brother always begrudgingly left his room and ate. We always had leftovers for days. But every year I learned more about my mother’s techniques. She spent hours in that kitchen sauteeing, simmering, basting, mixing, braising, and baking. When I became Muslim, I had to alter the family secrets. I couldn’t cook with the pork, I found smoked turkey, turkey sausage, beef bacon. I learned to make the soul food that reminded me of holidays when our small family came together.

When I went over friends’ houses, they introduced me to new dishes and types of food. I fell in love with mid-eastern food and experimented nearly daily on the family that I worked for as a nanny. At the same time, I fell in love with Creole food and the flavors of New Orleans. I cooked for friends and family, gatherings, and all of those smells and tastes are part of my memories.

I read “Like Water for Chocolate” and the passion that went into each prepared dish in that novel. I think of the sweet passion and love that went into some of my best culinary creations. I haven’t been able to replicate those same tastes and textures because I haven’t been able to put my whole soul into preparing a dish. I remember in my early twenties, after preparing a dish with love, he looked over the table and said, “This reminds me of my grandma.” Single and living by myself, I stopped cooking like that. Food was a communal thing. Loved ones had to be there when I cooked. I had to see the enjoyment on their face as they enjoyed the textures and complexity that went into each dish I prepared.

This year, I had been bragging about my culinary skills, but began worrying that my skills were slipping. I remember practicing one day, in preparation that I would be called on it. In a poorly equipped kitchen, I attempted to reclaim my glory. Not my best work, but not bad either. Like my momma’s, he said. But, I’m going to go visit mine this summer and work on making some dishes like my momma’s.

Black Jesus

Posted in Christianity, Muslim Women, Race in America, Race in Muslim Societies, White supremacy by

This entry was inspired by some questions a Muslim brother asked me about conversion, Christianity, race, and my views of a white God:

As a Christian, I had a hard time absorbing that whole race division issue. I didn’t understand how could KKK be good Christians and hate us so much. How could someone be a good Christian and fight the Civil Rights movement? Interesting thing in history is that the Catholic Church condones interracial marriage. And had it not been for the virulent opposition of the Irish American community, the Catholic Church would have played a greater part in the Civil Rights movement.

Muslims do have divisions, but we have important rituals and texts that combat racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions. This is why the Hajj scene in the Malcolm X movie was so powerful. Through this universal ritual all Muslims are brought together and class divisions are eradicated. Even in prayer, you can go to any mosque and perform prayer without understanding the language of the local community members.

Another thing that drew me to Islam was the Prophet’s (SAW) last sermon. He addressed racial equality, relationships between men and women, all sort of important issues that affect us today. This is during the 7th century, predating any racial equality movement by 1400 years. The closest we get to that in the Bible is the story about the Good Samaritan, but that is a sectarian difference not really ethnic or racial.

When I was a little little girl. My sister and I used to try out different churches. At one church, the people told us that when after we die and go to heaven God would burn off all skin and we’d be white like everyone else. Of course this was horrifying, up till then I didn’t know that anything was wrong with our brown skin. I didn’t really even know the difference between black and white. I thought my mom was white because she was lighter than everyone else around us.

Years later, I remember going to a Mormon church with my mom. They showed us pictures of Jesus and God visiting, I think, Joseph Brown. Jesus was totally Aryan (with a beard though)and God was just an older version with white hair and a white beard. That picture just creeped me out. They told us that there was a war between God and Satan and that there were angels who stayed with god and some angels sided with Satan. Then there were the fence-sitting angels who could not choose. According to the story, God cursed these angels and they became black people. So this explained slavery and the condition of Africans. Of course, I was totally horrified to hear such a thing.

Then, we get to more mainstream depictions. The pictures always bothered me, worshipping a white God. I read lots of illustrated bibles. And I never saw any black people, unless we were talking about Noah cursing Ham.

As an African American, the story of the Jews and four hundred years of slavery in Egypt had a special resonance. I wrestled with this notion of a chosen people and the pictures of a European Jesus (who was God). Maybe this is all reflected in the appearance of Black Jesus paintings. Funny thing is, my dad had long straight hair when I was a kid. He kind of looked like the picture of Black Jesus. Sometimes women would see him on the street, sometimes as jokes, sometimes real (according to my mother’s account) calling out “Jesus!” I am trying to find that picture, because that would be pretty cool.

In early church iconography Jesus did look Middle Eastern, especially in Greek and Russian orthodox churches. During the Renaissance, the Italians decided to paint scenes using local models, so thus the pictures of Mary, Jesus and the Saints looked like Northern Italians. This allowed for people to relate to them. If you look at nativity scenes, they look like Italian villages because many of the artists did not know what Bethlehem looked like.

There is a controversial movie set in modern where Jesus is an African. Many people are in an uproar. Not to offend Christians, but the image of a white God has been used to dominate non-Europeans and justify white supremacy. This has been an unfortunate consequence that has developed out of Europeans doing the same thing that the African producers are doing–making an image of the Messiah in a way that is culturally accessible to the local population. I think it is is worthwhile, but if we make it universal then it becomes oppressive. So, if we want to make a Native American nativity scene, East Asian, South Asian, Aboriginal, African, even Mixed Race nativity would be totally awesome. Why not? Palestine is at the cross roads of three different continents.

Sit Down Nigga!!

Posted in Interracial Relationships, Race in America by

I don’t really care what anybody says, it is not really okay for black people/African Americans to use nigga. It is definitely NOT okay for you to say it if your family did not come over to America on slave ships. But everybody wants to feel at ease with black culture, like they can own co-opt everything (especially our most controversial then use it without social consequences). That’s fine, I believe in cultural exchange, borrowing, ethnic and religious pluralism. But this is where I draw the line in the sand. Maybe there should be a jar where everytime someone drops the word nigga they put a dollar in for the the United Negro College Fund, better yet the Uhuru Movement. Every time a rap artist or some cat in the street says it in public, it has a cost for me. It has a cost in how I’m perceived as a Black woman, in how I have to work everyday to counter stereotypes, generalizations. It has a cost to me everyday because I have to work to raise the self esteem of the little boys and girls in my family and community telling them that they are not niggas, but human beings. So all you cats who use nigga, but don’t bear the burden of countering that image need to pay up, because I’m working my ass off to counter the niggerization of people of African descent each and everyday.

So, it doesn’t matter if your black boyfriend says it, or you hear it like a mantra in your rap music…you’re just showing how little respect you have for Black people and the depths of your ignorance about the issues that we face.

Here’s a little story brought to you by Black History Month, shortest month of the year:

Teacher uses racial epithet toward student

Valley High teacher Paul Dawson earns 10-day suspension for incident, but impact is far-reaching

http://www.whas11.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?vidId=49293&catId=49